VieuxChat wrote:
I'm curious to know how many people here have a low resolution.

Why removing things when there's still lots of space ?

Well a lot of laptop users are limited to 1366x786 res and I find it a little bit annoying more and more games are shifting towards 1980x1026 (or something like that ^^").



I believe if I were to remove just one button I'd say options are first to go as I think majority of players are accustomed to them being in esc menu. Next one imo would be city list as It can be part of empire overview similar as to academy is part of military screen.



I use military button only when I have to design new unit and diplomacy only when declaring war. That said I think those should stay as there in no other logical place to put them. Marketplace I used only once per game to buy second here (as troops get slaughtered without hero most of the time).



IMO if there are good shortcuts for that options (like c for city list half of them could be possibly moved). I'd also like to see diplomacy be prompted by right clicking on enemy city.

Move "Options" to ESC and add button for Academy

I agree with PANCZASU that I'd prefer an extra button (or a hotkey) vs. having to dig through menus to get to a screen. All except Diplomacy (which is because it isn't functioning) I use currently.

Personally, I hate the idea of removing buttons from the game screen and I objected to the idea of removing academy screen in the past. There's lots of space for UI in EL and I hate having to click too many times to enter one particular menu that I want to use. It's simply annoying and a waste of time. You might argue that spending extra two seconds on clicking a button, browsing through some menu and clicking another button to get to where you want to be is not a very big deal. But this adds up and it would be much faster to just press one button and be where you want to be.

Currently I find I'm using all of the screens to get the full picture of what I'm doing and what I need to do based on the situation in game.



@VieuxChat

Or grouping buttons ? Like you hover above "Empire" and you have two new buttons that appear and you can click on "Overview" or "City list".

I wouldn't like to have more clicks to do for mundane things like navigating the management screens.

And why not adding more "crossover" link ? For instance, in the empire management screen I often go the city list then to the empire screen. Or between diplomacy and empire screen. Or market and empire screen.

One of my biggest pet hates are multiple clicks between screens to understand what is happening and management of your game. So I'm with you here.



Please think on..

#1 The number of clicks required

#2 Menu screens that do not link with each other

#3 Hidden information/action buttons

#4 Non-intuitive management information



For me the devs have worked hard to get the information to us in a format for all screen sizes, so I wouldn't want a huge list scrolling off the screen, where you end up scrolling all the way to the top to make a change, then scrolling all the way down again. Etc, etc. This is what would happen with the City and Empire screens merging. A few people have suggested this, and a few others have said just what I have. It's a mistake. There's way too much information to merge them. What's needed is an overview with a click through for editing.



My own personal solution is that in the Empire screen the Empire Plan pane is made an interactive view zone (it's big enough). Buttons to flick between Empire Plan, Research Wheels (scroll button left and right for levels), Quest view listing current quests open and the required action to complete, and city list view (scrolls down) showing the FIDSI and a little map at the side (my own personal wish) showing where on the world map it is. The amount of times I've scrolled across my empire to find cities that are near the boarders to prioritise defence because I didn't remember their name or placement



The point being that the management information you expect to see is there in overview, with simple clicks that sit next to each other so very little mouse movement is needed, and you can click into it for greater depth if needed which then exits back to the Empire screen, rather than clicking between multiple management screens to set your empire up.

I like the idea of cycling through different screens but is it really used ? I tend to check regularly one of those screens when looking for specific info every few turns but rarely do I cycle through them.

Probably not a costy idea to implement though.

Atepa wrote:
I'd actually avoid merging the two screens... sure when you have only 5-6 cities there is a lot of empty space in the City Overview panel, but once you are dealing with 10+ it is nice to not have to be scrolling every 5 cities to get to the next batch. Additionally they both have their own important data to show that isn't really related in a true sense.

A different system could be introduced aswell, providing a similar feel like the tech tree, dragging the screen left and right to go to a different part, that way you could still merge buttons into 1. Example:

(click to enlarge)



I used the city list, marketplace and empire screen. But ofcourse different screens could be merged.

I mostly use:

Empire, Research, Diplomacy, Market



Potential Candidates for removal:

City -> could be moved into empire as a submenu

Quests -> could be moved into empire as a submenu

Options -> Could be moved somewhere else (lower right near the "End Turn" button?)

I'd like to clarify that imo "merging" any two screens would be mistake. I think either adding a button somewhere or adding an arrow on the edge of the screen that would take you to the other screen is how this should be resolved.

My suggestion is to merge the cities and quests into the empire.

adder wrote:
One could opt to merge the empire management screen and the city list screen, which drops already 1 button.

I'd actually avoid merging the two screens... sure when you have only 5-6 cities there is a lot of empty space in the City Overview panel, but once you are dealing with 10+ it is nice to not have to be scrolling every 5 cities to get to the next batch. Additionally they both have their own important data to show that isn't really related in a true sense.

Hello Everyone,



We think of simplifying a bit the top left menu, as there is one or two shortcuts too many in our opinion and we would love to hear what menus you use the most, or which one you would not want to see removed... you can vote for as many as you want, vote for all of them if there are all very important in your eyes.







Of course removing one from that menu would mean simply putting it somewhere else and not removing it from the game. But we believe that having a bit less icons there would reinforce each one being displayed at that location.



Thank you for your votes!



Spacetroll

I'd suggest making which shortcuts appear as options. I think the option shortcut could be removed and replaced with hitting [esc]

adder wrote:
One could opt to merge the empire management screen and the city list screen, which drops already 1 button.

Second that. It actually took me about 5hrs of game time to realize there even was a city list, I kept looking for a way to access it from the Empire screen

One could opt to merge the empire management screen and the city list screen, which drops already 1 button.

Yeah I would nix the Options menu as well... Alternatively, setup some hotkeys for the menus that do exist. (I can't recall if I saw any in the options menu) I'd be much more accepting of something like the empire menu being off screen / made smaller, if I had access to it via a hotkey same goes for Diplomacy, City Overview, and the Market. (I guess really any of them work as hotkeys instead of buttons.



An additional Alternative, would be to have them in sort of a drop down list so that you click a 'screens' button, and then it dropped down a list of all 7-9 of them.

I actually use all of them, except for the diplomacy one since it's not in yet, and options, since I usually just press Esc for that. The one shortcut I think is missing one towards the academy, which seems to get much more use in EL than in ES in my experience (I usually buy 5-7 heroes). Like others have posted, I could see taking out the options shortcut for one to the academy, and that was the only one I was surprised not to find on that bar.

Can't the options be on esc button (where saves and stuff are)?



I do not use diplomacy from obvious reasons.



I rarerly use market, only for heroes (and just a few times) and when im forced to have some special minions.



Most of ten used:

- Quests - tracking quests is sometimes complicated

- Research pointing

- Unit design.



Overall i found shortcuts well organize, and even if im not using it will be suprised if disapear.

Just options are rare button, i will get my options right and never use it again save for saves

If you are looking to move one of them, the options icon seems like the logical choice. You already have it separated from the others by a larger space. It is also fairly common in other game UIs for options to be bottom right somewhere near the next turn button.

Too many icons? The diplomacy one is currently the less used for obvious reasons but I use all the rest. The market one maybe not so much except for heroes, but I'd not remove it. And we lack academy one. I fI had to remove one, I'd remove the options one.